


Asterismos

by stoprobbers



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-19
Updated: 2014-05-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 17:00:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1655837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stoprobbers/pseuds/stoprobbers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(n.) "Marking with stars."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Asterismos

When they get back to London the first thing she asks him to do is draw a map of the stars.  
  
When she first Fell, when she lost just about every single thing that defined who she was and how she came to be, all she’d had left was the contents of her pockets. He’d made all her pockets bigger on the inside of course, did that practially the first night she came on board, telling her in no uncertain terms (and with that unwielding norther burr) that his precious leather coat was *not* to double as her purse. In those cold, grey, half-remembered days after The Fall she’d unpacked her pockets piece by piece. Receipts from an Earth mall in the 66th century, printed on wafer-thin plastic. A snapshot of Urus, taken with whatever passed for a disposable camera there. Her passport, unstamped. A few tokens sharper, more painful — a dirty broken shoelace, a spare pair of glasses, a crumpled, handwritten note — of the Doctor and the TARDIS but mostly useless ephemera, the debris of her life, not the tokens of it. After The Beach she’d forced herself out of numbness and into action but that only made it brighter, blooming like the dazzling stars a blow to the head flashes behind your eyelids. She threw herself into Torchwood, into the Dimension Canon, into missions that were an odd blend of her old life and made for television political thrillers. Everywhere she traveled she left pieces of herself in her wake. Soon she floundered. When she looked around her nothing felt the same.  
  
He is wary around her. Hopeful and terrified and on top of that just reeling. She’s not the only one that’s had one hell of a time. If you think about it, he’s only a couple weeks old. They fall into a rhythm not unlike the first weeks after his regeneration, tip-toeing and talking around, still with that sharp tension between them but a hundred fold. She still remembers the way he tasted and she knows he remembers the same. They’ve been sleeping apart and not quite talking; their closest moments are when she leans over his shoulder, watching as he carefully inks constellations of white dwarves and red giants, a spray of distant galaxies like freckles across the page. He didn’t ask which stars she wanted. When he finished it she’s at work and he rolls it up and ties it with a ribbon.   
  
The first time they kiss after The Beach (Mark Two) is when he hands to it her.   
  
He thinks that’s the sign for things to get better. He, haltingly, begins to talk to her, begins to quietly panic about his new body and his new life and all of the things that could mean. She finds a compassion she knew she had and didn’t quite expect as he does. There is more kissing. The guest room is abandoned. She gets used to the feel of him curled around her at night, his arm dead weight over her waist and his more-frequent-than-he’ll-admit soft snores in her ear. He gets used to sleeping at least five hours a night. They take picnic lunches and laugh over her coworkers. They hold hands like they used to. Slowly but surely, he realizes she’s sneaking away late at night.  
  
He’s not sure what to do with that information. He thinks about asking Jake and decides against it; he and Rose are too close, and if she’s just going for walks or something, if she’s doing things to help her cope with this unexpected turn of events (she’s had time to get used to it, a traitorous part of his mind whispers, and he pushes it away with the same viciousness he feels towards bloody Daleks) he doesn’t want to accuse her of something else. He trusts her, he does. He swears he does. He wouldn’t swear on something like that before, and that *means* something, it has to. He thinks about asking Jackie and almost goes through with it, has the phone in his hand when he realizes exactly what he’s about to do and slams it back down into the cradle, horrified. No, he will not be talking to *Jackie* about this.   
  
Instead, he feigns sleep. He gets a feel for her pattern. Only a couple nights a week and she’s always so tired afterward, always a little bit withdrawn. She’s pulling away from him and it feels like a knife slowly being pulled out of a deep wound. He thinks it will kill him soon if he doesn’t do something about it.  
  
She always leaves on Tuesday nights so that Tuesday he turns in early, waits for her to leave, then gets up. He makes himself a cup of coffee and waits.  
  
It takes her a few hours to come home. It’s just barely dawn and he can tell by the gentle turning of the lock, her almost-imperceptible footsteps as she comes in the door, that she is confident he’s asleep. He also knows that means she hasn’t noticed the lights are on. She closes the door, re-locks it, begins to turn, and freezes. He takes a sip of his coffee — fourth cup now, if this was a normal day night day she’d be extremely cross with him and whoever let him get near the coffee pot that many times — as she finishes turning around and collects herself.  
  
“I am trying,” he says, hoping his tone is neutral and patient and knowing it’s probably quite the opposite, “not to jump to conclusions.”  
  
The way time slows he thinks he’s suddenly recovered some of his Time Sense, suddenly regained that ability to stretch a single second forever. For eternity, or a moment, she is absolutely still and silent. Then her whole frame slumps, as if the fight’s gone completely out of her. On a dime, he is terrified that he has broken the woman he loves.   
  
“It was gonna be a surprise,” she scolds gently, but one corner of her mouth has quirked up in that affectionate way she has, and he is dumbstruck. His mouth gapes open a little, searching for an appropriate response to this unexpected reaction, then does a pretty spectacular impression of a fish as she unzips and sheds her jacket, then pulls her loose t-shirt over her head. She is not wearing a bra. That is the first thing he notices and, like the man he cannot help but be anymore, he is momentarily transfixed by her breasts. Rose Tyler, he had always suspected and now knew, has magnificent breasts.   
  
The air seems to change when her half-smile turns into a full-out smirk and it shifts his attention to her tired face and then the large white bandage taped to her side. He is on his feet and at her side before he knows it.  
  
“What happened, who hurt you–” He starts but she’s turned just a bit and now he can see her back and he is brought up short and speechless once again.   
  
Her back is covered, in delicate black ink, with his hand-drawn star map.  
  
“What–” he says, no breathes, a word escaping from a blank mind on an involuntary exhale. She scrapes her hair off the nape of her neck with one hand and he sees it starts at the very base of her hair, and scatters all over her shoulders, her triceps, her back, wrapping around on each side of her ribcage, and down towards her jeans. It’s not finished and he can tell exactly where it’s meant to go, all the way down to the small of her back and beyond, maybe all the way down her arse to the backs and insides of her thighs. He receives a vivid image of what it would look like from behind her, buried in her heat and the universe before him on her skin. He shudders from head to toe.  
  
“I couldn’t remember my stars,” she says softly, “I had some things in my pockets and some stars, but the sky is different here, have you noticed? Nothing crazy, I don’t think, and you haven’t pointed out any huge gaps or additions, but it’s not the same, is it? This place… this place isn’t home. It will never be home. You and me, Doctor, our homes are lost to us forever.”  
  
Her words, her tone, bring his gaze back up to her face and it is so open, her eyes so huge but not scared. She is so brave, and he loves her. Oh, he loves her.   
  
“You gave me the stars. *My* stars. Now I can keep them.”  
  
“Rose…” he chokes out and she goes to him then, her bare chest pressing against his thin undershirt, her skin hot where his arms wrap around her. They rock slowly back and forth in front of their flat’s small breakfast bar, his nose in her hair, hers in the crook of his neck.  
  
“I was scared you were cheating on me,” he admits, eyes on the wall behind her. Her shoulders bounce as she utters a humorless chuckle.  
  
“You’ve always been daft.” There’s a rustle, the plasticy gauze covering her freshest tattoo shifting as they move. She reluctantly disengages from him. “I’ve gotta be careful. They’re thin lines; heal quick but they’re delicate before then. Sorry, love.”  
  
He takes her face in his hands, kisses her lips lightly, sweetly. Trails those hands down her neck to her waist, one heavier than the other.  
  
“We’ll have to switch sides of the bed,” he murmurs, nose brushing hers in slow Eskimo kisses.  
  
“Hmm?” she murmurs and sounds mesmerized and he feels like a Time Lord again.  
  
“I have a whole universe to explore.”


End file.
